Imagine if the Tea Party was Black....interesting read.

[jemelanson]

http://ephphatha-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html

"Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise
Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

I dare you to read this and ponder it and see how it might change you view of the Tea Party.

[Electric Monk]

1. It's at the very top of the Greatest Threads list as I type this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8206688

[bluestateguy]

2. When the Black Panthers had the temerity to carry guns in public

that spurred white politicians in the California legislature to demand gun control.

Gun control is actually very racist.

Anyway, I agree with what Tim Wise said here.

[malaise]

6. What about this man?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/us/06obadele.html?scp=3&sq=&st=nyt
<snip>
Imari Obadele, a teacher and writer whose commitment to black empowerment fired a militant, sometimes violent effort to win reparations for descendants of slaves and to carve out, however quixotically, an African-American republic in the Deep South, died on Jan. 18 in Atlanta. He was 79.

Imari Obadele, center, in a 1971 Republic of Afrika news conference in Jackson, Miss.

The cause was a stroke, said Johnita Scott, his former wife.

Mr. Obadele (pronounced oh-ba-DEL-ee) was president of what he called the Republic of New Afrika, a country that existed as an idea. His provocative proposal was to have Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina — the heart of the old Confederacy — removed from the union and given over to black Americans.

The demand drew the national news media’s attention. The New York Times called it “bizarre.”

[tblue]

3. If the teapartiers were Latino, or Native American, or Gay, or just about anything else,

there'd be a strong reaction and the book thrown at them. They'd be rounded up and arrested, or at least threatened with arrest.

I always thought that if all black people were to get armed, the 2nd Amendment would take on a whole new meaning for the gun-worshipping 'patriots.'

[Blue Meany]

4. I was at the 1971 Convention held in DC by the Black Panthers,

which was comparable in some ways. The Panthers were known to be militant, and I remember speakers sayings things like "we didn't bring our guns...this time," and stuff like that. But what I really remember is the incredibly tight security they maintained at the meetings to make sure that no weapons of any kind got in (they confiscated my spray paint because it could be used as a weapon). They were concerned about assassination attempts on Panther leaders (and not without reason)as well as loose cannons on the left starting something that would end in a blood bath. The Tea Partiers are different on both counts: they don't have to be worried about violence directed against themselves, and they could care less about controlling the crazies in their midst.

[zbdent]

5. I can tell you one thing ...

there would have been a hell of a lot more arrests of "tea party members" ... and the media focus would be on the "trouble-makers" ...